Tuesday, May 15, 2012

The kangaaroo court convenes on Tareq al-Hashemi

KUNA reports, "The first session for the trial of former Vice President Tareq Al-Hashemi began here Tuesday with the charges being guiding and financing terrorist attacks." Tareq al-Hashemi (pictured above) has been a vice president since 2006. He is currently serving his second term. Currently serving. He has not been removed from office so this trial is legally not supposed to take place. But the law's never mattered in Nouri's Iraq. Nouri waited until the bulk of US forces had left to Iraq to suddenly declare his political rival al-Hashemi a "terrorist." The vice president remains in Turkey.

Chen Zhi (Xinhua) reports that, as the trial started this morning, the court sent out spokesperson Abdul-Sattar al-Birqdar to insist, "There are many crimes that Hashimi and his bodyguards are accused of and we have confessions from them, including the assassination of six judges." No, you don't have "confessions." Leaving aside that Iraq forces "confessions" by torture, what you have is testimony -- and it may or may not be convincing. Someone needs to educate the IDIOTS posing as judges in Baghdad and their little spokesperson on the law and on how the judiciary is always, ALWAYS, to come off impartial. If a columnist, a police officer, a pundit wants to call them "confessions" that's fine and dandy. But with a judiciary, we're always supposed to believe that they weighed the comments seriously before coming to a decision.

Chen Zhi has the best report on the day thus far. AFP's report would be stronger if they had taken the raw information they had and done journalism with it. AFP notes that the first witnesses were "families of three victims whose deaths Hasemi is accused of orchestrating." In addition, there were three other witnesses. It would be nice to know who they were. I don't mean names, I don't expect names -- it's not like this is a truly public hearing, get real. But I do expect to know if these people could even offer any testimony against al-Hashemi.

By that I mean, victims families can testify to losses. That's all they can do unless they're eye witnesses. Even if they are eye witnesses, they have no testimony on al-Hashemi. So this was to set a mood for the court and nothing more. Those other three witnesses? Who were they? Are they in the position to have seen something or are we just getting accusations and hearsay presented as direct testimony?

Most importantly, this sentence from AFP doesn't cut it: "Three other witnesses gave testimony, accusing Hashemi of masterminding
the assassinations, before reporters were led out of the room." Why? Was secret testimony being introduced? What was going on? If reporters are led out of the courtroom while a trial is going on, hate to break it to AFP, but that's your lede, not the fifth sentence and fifth paragraph of your report. And that's all the more true when there were calls for international observers in advance of the trial and that call does not appear to have been heeded.

As the political crisis intensifies, Al Rafidayn reports that MP Mohammed Jawad (of Moqtada al-Sadr's bloc) is stating that, should a no-confidence vote take place, the names on the list to replace Nouri al-Maliki are Ahmed Chalabi, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, Hussein al-Shahristani and Khudayr Musa Jafar Abbas al-Khuzai. Ahmed Chalabi -- like Nouri -- has very tight connections to Iran. So much so that his compound was raided by the US military despite the fact that he was once one of the prized exiles (he was also Dexter Filkins' favorite Iraqi source for 'reporting'). Ibrahim al-Jaafari was previously prime minister. (The US refused to allow him a second term in 2006 and demanded that Nouri al-Maliki be named prime minister.) Hussain al-Shahristani is the Deputy Prime Minister for Energy. He was educated in London and Toronto. He's a nuclear scientist who fled Saddam Hussein's Abu Ghraib prison during the first Gulf War and went through Iran onto Canada. al-Khuzai is the Shi'ite Vice President. Alsumaria notes that MP Abdul Amir Mayahi (also of the Sadr bloc) stated that Ibrahim al-Jaafari is their ideal candidate, calling him a national figure and a moderate. (al-Jaafari was prime minister from April 2005 until May 2006.) Meanwhile Al Mada has interesting article where State of Law and Dawa officials state that, if Nouri is replaced, the replacement must come from the National Alliance. The argument goes that Nouri wouldn't have been prime minister without the consolidated support and backing of the National Alliance therefore they should be the pool from which a different prime minister was selected. All the names being tossed around are from the National Alliance (a slate of various Shi'ite political groups). What makes it interesting is that Dawa -- Nouri's own political party -- and State of Law -- Nouri's own political slate -- appear to be preparing for the possibility that Nouri might be replaced. Prior to this, they've insisted that it wasn't happening. Now their public presentation is: If it does, the prime minister has to come from the National Allaince. This shift in public strategy may result from the meeting Alsumaria reports took place last night and was chaired by Ibrahim al-Jaafari. All the political blocs of the National Alliance were present.

The following community sites -- plus Antiwar.com, Susan's On Edge, Salon, CSPAN, Black Agenda Report and Chocolate City -- updated last night and this morning:

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